There is no Tenderloin. There never was. That is, none that you could run a tapeline around. The word really implies a condition or a quality—much as you would say “reprehensibility” or “cold feet.”
Metes and bounds have been assigned to it. I know. Realists have prated of “from Fourteenth to Forty-second,” and “as far west as” etc., but the larger meaning of the word remains with me.
Confirmation of my interpretation of the famous slaughterhouse noun-adjective came to me from Bill Jeremy, a friend out of the West. Bill lives in a town on the edge of the prairie-dog country. At times Bill yearns to maintain the tradition that “ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth.” He brought his last yearning to New York. And it devolved upon me. You know what that means.
I took Bill to see the cavity that has been drilled in the city’s tooth, soon to be filled with the new gold subway; and the Eden Musée, and the Flatiron and the crack in the front windowpane of Russell Sage’s house, and the old man that threw the stone that did it when he was a boy—and I asked Bill what he thought of New York.
“You may mean well,” said Bill, with gentle reproach, “but you’ve got in a groove. You thought I was underwear buyer for the Blue-Front Dry Goods Emporium of Pine Knob, NC, didn’t you? Or the junior partner of Slowcoach & Green, of Geegeewocomee, State of Goobers, come on for the fall stock of jeans, lingerie, and whetstones? Don’t treat me like a business friend.
“Do you suppose the wild, insensate longing I feel for metropolitan gayety is going to be satisfied by waxworks and razorback architecture? Now you get out the old envelope with the itinerary on it, and cross out the Brooklyn Bridge and the cab that Morgan rides home in and the remaining objects of interest, for I am going it alone. The Tenderloin, well done, is what I shall admire for to see.”
Bill Jeremy has a way of doing as he says he will. So I did not urge upon him the bridge, or Carnegie Hall or the great Tomb—wonders that the unselfish New Yorker reserves, unseen, for his friends.
That evening Bill descended, unprotected, upon the Tenderloin. The next day he came and put his feet upon my desk and told me about it.
“This Tenderloin,” said he, “is a cross between a fake sideshow and a footrace. It’s a movable feast—somethin’ like Easter, or tryin’ to eat spaghetti with chopsticks.
“Last night I put all my money but nine dollars under a corner of the carpet and started out. I had along a bill-of-fare of this here Tenderloin; it said it begins at Fourteenth Street and runs to Forty-second, with Fourth Avenue and Seventh on each side of it. Well, I started up from Fourteenth so I wouldn’t miss any of it. Lots of people was travellin’ on the streets in a hurry. Thinks I, the Tenderloin’s sizzlin’ tonight; if I don’t hurry I won’t get a seat at the performance.
“Most of the crowd seemed to be goin’ up and I went up. And then they seemed to be goin’ down, and I went down. I asks a man in a light overcoat with a blue jaw leanin’ against a lamppost where was this Tenderloin.
“Up that way,” he says, wavin’ his finger-ring.
“ ‘How’ll I know it when I get to it?’ I asks.
“ ‘Yah!’ says he, like he was sick. ‘Easy! Youse’ll see a flax-headed cull stakin’ a doll in a 98-cent shirtwaist to a cheese sandwich and sarsaparilla, and five Salvation Army corporals waitin’ round for de change. Dere’ll be a phonograph playin’ and nine cops gettin’ ready to raid de joint. Dat’ll be it.’
“I asked that fellow where I was then.
“ ‘Two blocks from de Pump,’ says he.
“I goes on uptown, and seein’ nothin’ particular in the line of sinful delight, I strikes ’crosstown to another avenue. That was Sixth, I reckon. People was still walkin’ up and down, puttin’ first one foot in front and then the other in the irreligious and wicked manner that I suppose has given the Tenderloin its frivolous reputation. Street cars was runnin’ past, most impious and unregenerate; and the profligate Dagoes was splittin’ chestnuts to roast with a wild abandon that reminded me considerably of doings in Paris, France. The dissipated bootblacks was sleepin’ in their chairs, and the roast peanut whistles sounded gay and devilish among the mad throng that leaned ag’inst the awnin’ posts.
“A fellow with a high hat and brass buttons gets down off the top of his covered sulky, and says to me, ‘Keb, sir?’
“ ‘Whereabouts is this Tenderloin, Colonel?’ I asks.
“ ‘You’re right in the centre of it, boss,’ says he. ‘You are standin’ right now on the wickedest corner in New York. Not ten feet from here a pushcart man had his pocket picked last night; and if you’re here for a week I can show you at least two moonlight trolley parties go by on the New Amsterdam line.’
“ ‘Look here,’ says I, ‘I’m out for a razoo. I’ve got nine iron medallions of Liberty wearin’ holes in my pocket linin’. I want to split this Tenderloin in two if there’s anything in it. Now put me on to something that’s real degraded and boisterous and sizzling with cultured and uproarious sin. Something in the way of metropolitan vice that I can be proud of when I go back home. Ain’t you got any civic pride about you?’
“This sulky driver scratched the heel of his chin.
“ ‘Just now, boss,’ says he, ‘everything’s layin’ low. There’s a tip out that Jerome’s cigarettes ain’t agreein’ with him. If it was any other time—say,’ says he, like an idea struck him, ‘how’d you like to take in the all-night restaurants? Lots of electric lights, boss, and people and fun. Sometimes they laugh right out loud. Out-of-town visitors mostly visit our restaurants.’
“ ‘Get away,’ says I, ‘I’m beginnin’ to think your old Tenderloin is nothin’ but the butcher’s article. A little spice and infamy and audible riot is what I am after. If you can’t furnish it go back and climb on your demi-barouche. We have restaurants out West’ I tells him, ‘where we eat grub attended by artificial light and laughter. Where is the boasted badness of your unjustly vituperated city?’
“The fellow rubs his chin again. ‘Deed if I know, boss,’ says he, ‘right now. You see Jerome’—and then he buds out with another idea. ‘Tell you what,’ says he, ‘be the very thing! You jump in my keb and I’ll drive you over to Brooklyn. My aunt’s giving a euchre party tonight,’ says he, ‘because Miles O’Reilly is busy, watchin’ the natatorium—somebody tipped him off it was a poolroom. Can you play euchre? The keb’ll be $3.50 an hour. Jump right in, boss.’
“That was the best I could do on the wickedest corner in New York. So I walks over where it’s more righteous, hopin’ there might be somethin’ doin’ among the Pharisees. Everything, so far as I could see, was as free from guile as a hammock at a Chautauqua picnic. The people just walked up and down, speakin’ of chrysanthemum shows and oratorios, and enjoyin’ the misbegotten reputation of bein’ the wickedest rakes on the continent.”
“It’s too bad. Bill.” I said, “that you were disappointed in the Tenderloin. Didn’t you have a chance to spend any of your money?”
“Oh, yes,” said Bill. “I managed to drop one dollar over on the edge of the sinful district. I was goin’ along down a boulevard when I hears an awful hollerin’ and fussin’ that sounded good—it reminded me of a real enjoyable roughhouse out West. Some fellow was quarrelin’ at the top of his voice, usin’ cuss words, and callin’ down all kinds of damnation about somethin’.
“The sounds come out through a big door in a high buildin’ and I went in to see the fun. Thinks I, I’ll get a small slice of this here Tenderloin anyhow. Well, I went in, and that’s where I dropped the dollar. They came around and collected it.”
“What was inside. Bill?” I asked.
“A fellow told me, when we come out,” said Bill, “it was a church, and one of these preachers that mixes up in politics was denouncin’ the evils of the Tenderloin.”